Advice on Spam

The main focus of our spam advice section is to keep you informed with the latest news on new email spam campaigns, email-based threats and anti-spam solutions that can be deployed to prevent those threats.

Email spam is more than an annoyance. Even if the amount of spam emails received by employees is relatively small, it can be a major drain on productivity, especially for groups with hundreds or thousands of employees. This section includes articles offering advice on how to reclaim those lost hours by cutting the number of messages that are delivered to your employees’ inboxes.

However, much worse than the lost hours are the malware and ransomware threats that arrive through spam email. Email is now the number one attack vector used by hackers to deliver malware and ransomware. Hackers are now using increasingly sophisticated methods to get around security solutions. Today’s spam emails use advanced social engineering tactics to trick end users into revealing login details and other sensitive information, and installing malicious software on their computers.

Major advances have also been made to malware and ransomware. Self-replicating worms are being used to infiltrate entire networks before ransomware attacks take place, maximizing the damage caused and the ransom payments that can be generated. The cost to industry is significant. In 2018 ransomware attacks resulted in $1 billion in losses by companies, with 2017 expected to see those losses increase to a staggering $4 billion. Blocking spam email messages from being sent is therefore an essential element of any cybersecurity policy.

Good spam advice can help groups take action promptly to reduce the danger of email-based attacks.